Posted
by
Unknown Lamer
on Thursday March 01, 2012 @04:47PM
from the wikileaks-releases-back-issues-of-the-economist dept.

daveschroeder writes with an opinion piece that seems to differ from the usual thinking on the Wikileaks release of Stratfor emails: "Max Fisher writes in The Atlantic: 'The corporate research firm has branded itself as a CIA-like "global intelligence" firm, but only Julian Assange and some over-paying clients are fooled. [...] The group's reputation among foreign policy writers, analysts, and practitioners is poor; they are considered a punchline more often than a source of valuable information or insight. [...] So why do Wikileaks and their hacker source Anonymous seem to consider Stratfor, which appears to do little more than combine banal corporate research with media-style freelance researcher arrangements, to be a cross between CIA and Illuminati? The answer is probably a combination of naivete and desperation.'"

That's a pretty wafer thin opinion piece. Sure, Stratfor seems like a mess, but I think the most telling aspect of this whole fiasco is that we actually believe an intelligence company could be so moronic. That says a lot about the public's perception of government intelligence, or lack thereof, if imbeciles like Stratfor are actually being paid to provide services.

Stratfor and similar companies are basically specialized newspapers, much heavier on analysis than usual, with aggressive marketing departments. I have never been able to understand why Anonymous has such a stiffie for them-- its like Friedman ran over someone's dog, or something.

As for the accuracy, I won't dispute that, because I've found some rather questionable statements in areas I'm familiar with. (Although I will raise an eyebrow at the precision implied-- 23%? Really?) It's not meaningful unless you can compare it to other ratings for other news services.

And finally, I've seen Stratfor make at least grudging motions toward something virtually no other news service ever does-- they'll haul out last year's projections and see where they went wrong and try to explain why. Granted, they don't do a great job at this, but it's a refreshing effort, like when your kid finally learns to say please and thank-you.

Of course, some of us regard Stratfor as a joke with no tangible wit or discernible punchline. This does not impede idiots with more money than sense of humor from buying its output. Much the same can be said for The Atlantic, unfortunately...

"The problem is clear," wrote the US ambassador to Tunisia, Robert Godec, in July 2009, in a secret dispatch released by Beirut's al-Akhbar newspaper: "Tunisia has been ruled by the same president for 22 years. He has no successor. And, while President Ben Ali deserves credit for continuing many of the progressive policies of [predecessor] President Bourguiba, he and his regime have lost touch with the Tunisian people.

Perhaps the incompetence is a carefully engineered image to make people think there's nothing insidious to be concerned about?

they are considered a punchline more often than a source of valuable information or insight.

Doesn't the public largely have that perception of government already? That would seem to make them fit right in.

unlikely, the insidious thing is just their incompetence on multiple levels.

Stratfors main business was implying to people that they're in the know and that they sell information to cia/others- that was their main advertisement point, that the other clients are People Who Matter(tm). yet the information they could provide was always known to be the same quality a normal journalist could whip up. their one on one counsel was probably just pure bullshit too, my bet is that the head honcho acted like he knew more than he was saying all the time like a fucking cult leader he was trying to be - easier that way, no need to be precise. "oh great counter intelligence god will there be turmoil in middle-east?" "yes, we have information that the area is going to be under lots of political movement in the near future, that much is certain"(from even watching the fox news for past 10 years).

that's not to say that much of their intelligence shouldn't be taken seriously, I'm just implying that paying for it and a mouth that is there just to please you as a client is fucking stupid.

that business is crushed. that's the point of the leaks in this case, destroying a bullshit business selling snakeoil "intelligence". previously the way to know that they were a joke were to subscribe to them and read al jazeera and public forums - and who would fess up publicly that they paid for crap level intelligence? perhaps there were some people who thought stratfor would have had some inside information about obama being secretly part of KKK along with osama, but that's just stupid, as stupid as looking for proof of ET's in their material(which no doubt many people have done..).

That's a pretty wafer thin opinion piece. Sure, Stratfor seems like a mess, but I think the most telling aspect of this whole fiasco is that we actually believe an intelligence company could be so moronic. That says a lot about the public's perception of government intelligence, or lack thereof, if imbeciles like Stratfor are actually being paid to provide services.

What more effective cover for the deadly efficient than the guise of a disorganised clod?

That's a pretty wafer thin opinion piece. Sure, Stratfor seems like a mess, but I think the most telling aspect of this whole fiasco is that we actually believe an intelligence company could be so moronic. That says a lot about the public's perception of government intelligence, or lack thereof, if imbeciles like Stratfor are actually being paid to provide services.

What more effective cover for the deadly efficient than the guise of a disorganised clod?

That's a pretty wafer thin opinion piece. Sure, Stratfor seems like a mess, but I think the most telling aspect of this whole fiasco is that we actually believe an intelligence company could be so moronic. That says a lot about the public's perception of government intelligence, or lack thereof, if imbeciles like Stratfor are actually being paid to provide services.

What more effective cover for the deadly efficient than the guise of a disorganised clod?

Becuse like Aron Barr, the idiots in charge of powerful institutions are more often than not idiots themself. I mean, a person that spends all their time backstabbing and sucking ass to climb the corporate/political ladder will often have painfully little spare time to actually be useful for anything else.

All you need is a nice suite and some confidence and you too can be the president of the united states(after finding some coprate sponsors and people handlers to put you there), i can assure you that you w

Salesmen often have no special skills or knowledge other than the ability to get people to buy their products. The identify people with a need, or those people come to them. Those are leads. Those leads are qualified and then a sales attempt is made. People then buy those products. The fact that Stratfor is useless is nothing weird or strange. The customers (government or private) were sold a product that they thought suited a need they had. The sales people probably built a convincing case for a subscription to be bought and the everyone proceeded to think it was doing something for them. Like many sales pitches, it probably hit more on the potential of a service that was described in the way they described Stratfor, as opposed to the reality of just what they could provide.

Stratfor does sound like a joke. I'm still trying to figure out what the conspiracy is. Like the author in TFA said, their super-secret bribed sources are equivalent to freelance writers. Even before this piece, I was thinking to myself, "exactly what is being provided here that is in any way strange or illegal?"

The only story here is that there are a lot of people paying a lot of money for a crappy product.

This sort of stuff is daily business for countless organizations. There are research groups that do nothing but compile weekly reports for people dumb enough to subscribe. The P.T.Barnum business model.

Now if the Us government wasted money on Stratfor I'd be concerned, but if it's just some companies wasting their profits I wouldn't be too concerned. After all corporations are already wasting money on dubious research groups, ala Gartner.

How is it spin? The guy quotes articles and facts that are easily verified to show that Stratfor is not what it has been claimed to be by a well-known media whore. The only spin is coming from people who can't stand that Wikileaks could be blowing this out of proportion.

Strangely enough either way this goes it's an issue. Either the taxpayer money is being wasted or it's being spent on a private corporation to spy on American citizens. Maybe the real issue is that giving money to these guys is both wasteful and unethical.

You got some evidence for that "Government paid them to spy on on American citizens" comment?

Because the only evidence I've seen presented that they spied on American citizens said that they read a protest groups website, and then tell Dow Chemical what it says. Which involves neither spying nor being paid by the government.

Heck some definitions would be nice. I would have thought spying required wiretaps, and tailing people. But apparently all it takes is reading public websites.

... the mindset of the intelligence industry. It shows there is an element of self supported dependencies involved. This is not unlike addicts, such as Alcoholic and durg abuses etc. But on th eup side of thise there are help groups such as AA, OA, MA, SPA etc.. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_twelve-step_groups [wikipedia.org] ) where they have buddy systems because once you are so caught up in an addiction it is difficult to stay objective about getting yourself out of the addiction, hence the buddy system comes into play... better objectivity.

So, perhaps we need such a group for the Intelligence Industry, lets call it IA or better yet lets stay silent about the intelligence part and simply call the help group Anonymous.

has someone gone through the leaks to find out how much of that was actually happening? it seems a lot of the hype around their government connections was just so that they would appear credible and to get people to pay for their so called service.

So there may be real connections, but not something the government paid for. Stuff like that happens all the time. If you are a Big Name(tm) in an industry, people will give you shit for free just so they can say you use their shit. Marketing. Effective too.

I don't know if this is trolling, sarcasm but there is a grain of truth in this.

Slashdot is populated predominantly by engineer types. Engineers believe in processes and systems, engineers believe in the objective world and the scientific method.

So engineers have a tendency to support a political stance based around solving problems by engineered solutions, in other words, government programs. Tell an engineer that the government is broken and he'll try to fix it. Tell him that it is corrupt and he'll device decision making processes around human flaws.

What are the alternative political postures? Conservatism and Libertarianism. For an engineer Conservatism is a joke, it is based around tradition and authority. Authority is not objective and definitively not scientific. Science is based on independent verification but authority means that the authority is right, not because of evidence or proofs but because it says so. Tradition is simply putting authority on past decisions.

Fortunately only the most retarded conservatives would entrust this massive amount of faith to any single person. Unfortunately they have "God" an infallible (and unaccountable) authority figure who is then adopted by conservative leaders. Surprisingly they turn out to be quite balanced in their position about government power! If asked whether conservatives like the government or not, the answer is "both". They are against and in favor of government depending on who's in power, so they loved government when Bush was in in the White House and hate it now that Obama is. Sounds flip-floppy but is actually quite consistent.

So we are left with Libertarianism. Libertarianism is internally inconsistent. It is based on the doctrine that nothing good could ever come out of Government, except enforcing of private property. The core assumption is unquestionable. They'll won't concede any example of positive government intervention. Any attempt to patching it or fixing it will be derided as "yet another government agency" and declared part of the problem.

At this point it should be obvious why an engineer would have trouble with Libertarians, but they also adamantly support government enforcing of private property. Why is this acceptable? Why is this part of the government capable of helping? And why is the evils of corruption tolerable here?

Well, they just are.

It gets worse when you realize that their definition of private property and self determination are quite weird. They for instance have no concept of common land. They see absolutely nothing wrong with rich people monopolizing obscene amounts of resources. At the same time they see nothing wrong with creating areas of property where there was none. I'm talking about copyrights and patents. Things that nobody would conceive of "owning" are, for the Libertarians, not only appropriable, but MOST be so, the mere idea of anything being free is highly offensive to them, therefore their motto, "there's no such thing like a free lunch".

Let's be honest. Libertarians are kind of a modern oddity. A civilization cannot grow in Libertarianism. Who owns the land? Who owns the mountains? Who owns the grass? Who owns wildlife? Who owns the earth bellow your house? Who owns the water underground? the rivers across it? The rain above it? Who owns the roads? Who owns the electromagnetic spectrum? Any growing civilization would have bumped into these questions and discover that we, for the most part, have only one world that we must share. Libertarians are simple people born into a world too big for them to understand and think that simple rules would work just fine.

That's why few engineers adopt libertarianism. Except of course those who are so fed up with political corruption and idiotic electorate that have adopted Libertarianism out of despair. But honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if they just wanted to see the world burn.

I would like to think that engineers support a balanced approach to things (e.g. Stewart's I Disagree With You But I'm Pretty Sure You're Not a Nazi philosophy). Libertarians are, of course, idiots who ignore some fundamental truths about biology (namely that it tends to be cooperative).
My comment was not meant as flamebait or anything else, even though I knew it would be construed as such. It's simply the case that slashdot moderators will mod up anything pro-wikileaks and mod down anything pro-governm

I would like to think that engineers support a balanced approach to things (e.g. Stewart's I Disagree With You But I'm Pretty Sure You're Not a Nazi philosophy)

At the risk of repeating myself. Engineers support a technical or analytical aproach to things, "Balance" means nothing "Effective" means everything.

("Real" is another core principle. It could be argued that engineers only care about Reality because it's the best tool we have. Engineering could be described as a process of "reality finding" in other

Right, I understand your position but if I may excise the fluff, you're saying: many Slashdotters...are pro-wikileaks is because we think they are a net gain to society. And I just disagree with that (although nice job of portraying me as being outside of slashdot).

I'm sure I'll go to hell for it, but I'm going to quote Newt Gingrich from a moment of unusual clarity: "People like conspiracies because it is easier than believing that the world is large, random, and uncaring."

Now I personally think that's a little dark, but the sentiment is correct. It's much more comforting to blame someone for the crappy stuff that goes on. I also don't know why you're taking this quite so personally. I don't begrudge anyone this view of the world, I just think it's worth empathizing with opposing views. If you don't, there are some other countries that might suit you better.

Way back the kind of service Stratfor provides was valuable. Having someone in a foreign country pickup a local paper compile the relevant information then send them out to clients was valuable. The Internet has made this service worthless, but they are probably still used just because ripping them out of the burocracy is difficult. The CIA also got slapped around a bit when it was found out that they had ditched a large portion of "human" intelligence gathering in favor of electronic gathering after 9/11. So, they are probably a bit against just stripping out something worthless that allows them to claim "human" intelligence gathering. WikiLeaks and Anonymous just got tricked by Stratfor's internal Koolaid and Marketing trying to convince their clients that they are valuable. The value Stratfor really has is when a country shuts-down the internet internally, but at that point you really need a real spy since they probably stop the newspapers and other service that Stratfor uses too.

The CIA had ditched a lot of the human intelligence back in the 1990s because it meant that the US was providing money to informants who had some very disreputable backgrounds and Congress found this to be a bad thing. The CIA warned that getting intelligence on bad people often meant associating with said bad people, but Congress figured the same thing could be done electronically, nevermind that it's hard to hear from space what's going on between two people in a hut.

I don't take Oracle very seriously either. The only reason I pay them is because some doofus before me paid them, and now I can't get rid of their shit because there's code and peoples jobs based on it.

Wikileaks is exaggerating the importance of Stratfor. It isn't some spy operation, it is just news gathering and analysis. Stratfor is not a private CIA.The Atlantic article has two links to stories claiming Stratfor is a joke but they are both written by Daniel Drezner. I guess Daniel isn't impressed by Stratfor.Wikileaks may have some use, but by exposing emails from a bunch of guys who gather and report news for a living I don't think they have saved the world..Try again Julian.

Wikileaks is exaggerating the importance of Stratfor. It isn't some spy operation, it is just news gathering and analysis.

That's what spy operations are, though.

A spy operation would imply that a certain amount of deception (or at least extreme covertness) was used to secure information that is considered proprietary to an organization (i.e. they don't publish it on the internet or give it to any one who calls and asks). Was either of these things true about Stratfor?

i dont know what else to say. these guys coming out of the woodwork claiming wikileaks does nothing important, well, i am wondering why they dont more strongly defend Brad Manning and call for the dropping of Espionage charges against Jonisdottir, Assange, et al.

I was going through the Stratfor leak to assist in crowdsourcing research on the material. I found predominantly old news, employees sending each other e-mail links of dated internet articles, and dingbattily off-base novice assessments of geopolitical maneuverings and trends. The rest was industry-specific minutae ("How does [situation] affect the [goods] market in [country]?") and a few Excel spreadsheets of personally-identifiable employee and contact data. Stratfor appears to be what happens when someone with more money than brains gets an inflated sense of self-importance and decides it would be cool to run a corporate cloak-and-dagger firm.

Yes Stratfor is a joke. But like most jokes, the problem was that people were willing to take it seriously. Worse, Stratfor's intelligence and comprehension of geopolitics was still light-years ahead of the average U.S. citizen's.

A much better source of intel - though hardly ideal - for the curious would be at Benjamin Fulford's leak site [benjaminfulford.net]. Each Monday morning new updates arrive that are behind a paywall. They are then repeated for free on various blogs within hours.

I've noticed a similar tendency. It's true of Anonymous, of Wikileaks, and of the American People in general.

If any or all of these groups were better-informed, so would their results be. That they're not has been the result of consolidated media and a systematized effort to make uninformed peasants and dullards of them. That effort is coming to a close.

Getting people more aware - and aware of what's actually meaningful and how to discern the difference - would appear to be the next part of the process. Fortunately the information technology is already present, and mechanisms like Slashdot's moderation system will serve the People well. Valid stuff gets promoted into public awareness better, and that's just what we need. The combination of unemployed bloggers, information technology, social networking and an increasingly motivated public will enable us to form solutions and information distribution channels and get them noticed. It's less about diagnosing the problem, and getting to the business of forming solutions. Together. Not to mention getting onto the process of exposure and accountability for wrongdoers.

A lot of the stumbling blocks for people at the moment seem to be that they're predominantly unknowledgeable, they don't yet have sufficient discernment to know what to toss out let alone solutions to contribute or even participate in, and as a result they're pretty reactive to what passes before them, complaining about it or offering uneducated opinions and interpretations. Forming solutions, rather than complaining about the silliness we encounter, is The Next Thing. To stay ahead of the trends, work out what The Next Thing is, and then implement it.

For instance, how about a hybrid Wiki / Kickstarter specifically for corruption? Crowds can compile research - with citations - on the wrongdoings of corporations, politicians, CEOs and public notables. Each entry could have a fund, with people throwing in $50 or $100 to hire an attorney. When the fund fills up, you take them to court. You then return any damages awarded back to the users who invested in that specific fund, in whatever percentage they invested. Result: Crowd-based accountability to law. A new way to glean money for taking care of the rampant corruption. So instead of complaining about politicians, the public can finally do something about it. It wouldn't matter so much who got into office, provided they were accountable to the law and their sworn duties. And we could stop approaching elections like they were some giant slot machine, not to ineffectually telling each other to "Impeach [politician]" to no avail. With Drupal and BitCoin, it wouldn't take that much for a bunch of geeks to get started.

For instance, how about a hybrid Wiki / Kickstarter specifically for corruption? Crowds can compile research - with citations - on the wrongdoings of corporations, politicians, CEOs and public notables. Each entry could have a fund, with people throwing in $50 or $100 to hire an attorney. When the fund fills up, you take them to court. You then return any damages awarded back to the users who invested in that specific fund, in whatever percentage they invested. Result: Crowd-based accountability to law. A n

"I'm delighted to see they're giving Doctorates in Psychiatry to Anonymous Cowards these days."

Well, he may not have been very nice about it (especially in including you personally in his opinion), but dropping by the site you linked to, the second article (only slightly more breathless than the first) was headlined:

"A March 31st deadline has been delivered to the committee of 300 by the gnostic "illuminati" faction"

From the email Georgy sent out after the release of emails."The release of these emails is, however, a direct attack on Stratfor. This is another attempt to silence and intimidate the company, and one we reject. As you can see, emails sent to many people about my resignation were clearly forged.We do not know what else has been manufactured. Stratfor will not be silenced, and we will continue to publish the geopolitical analysis our friends and subscribers have come to rely on. "

Wikileaks is a platform that hosts the leaks they are sent to. Posting them is in no way a political statement of them. From the site:

On Monday February 27th, 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files, over five million e-mails from the Texas headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor. The e-mails date between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal’s Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defence Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor’s web of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering techniques and psychological methods.

They don't exaggerate anything, merely state the contents of the leak.

The fact that they made a big deal out of it, called a press conference and all that. If they considered this some joke of an org who wasn't really important, they'd just post the stuff as they've done with many, MANY other things. However they are making a big to-do like with the Manning leaks. That is them elevating Stratfor to some special position.

Moreover in this case they (and their friends) are clearly exaggerating what they've leaked. The last article Slashdot featured on Stratfor was all about how evil it was that the government was paying Stratfor to spy on an American activist group called the Yes Men. But if you read the emails you realized that they said did prove that, they proved Dow Chemical, a major target of the Yes Men's activism, was paying Stratfor to tell them what the Yes Men's official, and very public

I see Stratfor calling itself the "Shadow CIA". But is there really any connection to the CIA? From what I've seen they mostly market themselves to private industry, perhaps they have some subscribers in Washington but the connection seems casual at best.

Yes re CIA links are noted on http://cryptocomb.org/ [cryptocomb.org]
Also seems to be used for a "clean" email in/out, CIA email in/out type droop off box.
i.e. lots of CIA emails in everyday, lots of press, analyst, pundits, gov people too.
Whats one more email for a few real spies with to without diplomatic cover?
As for the shadow CIA, they did want to get into financial news.
If you have deep gov, diplomatic, commercial and press "friends" around the world, getting new before the bulk of traders would be much less har

That yes, the CIA probably does read Stratfor. However they read every major news publication. It is part of their intelligence gathering process. They know the news does good intelligence (sometimes at least) and they want to know what the news knows.

and one who had their information released I feel I can make some credible comments on the quality of Stratfor.

The primary use of Stratfor was background, especially in regions I was not familar or required too much attention to stay on top of. Second was the channelling of event and other information from various open source media, including local/domestic. Third was their analysis. Whether done by themself, others, or some combination, they usually got the broad picture correct and were good at breaking down economic data. However, Stratfor was poor when it came to near and medium term predictions on both economic and political events. Marginally better on military stuff.

I was a general subscriber, nothing 'special' ever requested. For the price, they were worth it. If you timed things properly you could have it annually for less than a sub to the WSJ and again, from an informational gathering standpoint they did a decent job. Perhaps a lot was open source and/or available if you really wanted to look, etc but that is exactly why you are paying a firm like stratfor - to do the searching and collating for you and give some kind of summary. They save time and effort.

They're useful as one source when combined with others. They at least a have a pretty predictable methodology.

The one area I saw that they seemed to be better than other sources was on the cartel wars and security situation in northern Mexico. That may have just been because they were more interested, being in Austin rather than say, NY.

I don't read Spanish, so following Mexican papers would be a problem. Having Stratfor summarize was a pretty good deal. The rates aren't all that much for a general subscription.

A friend who works in intelligence once joked that Stratfor is just The Economist a week later and several hundred times more expensive. As of 2001, a Stratfor subscription could cost up to $40,000 per year.

I think it costs around $100-200 per year, about the same as the Economist. As a reader of both, and much more, Stratfor is an excellent source of original, well-written analysis that you can't find elsewhere. Certainly calling them a private CIA is an exaggeration (I imagine their budget is a little smaller too), and certainly they have flaws (their obsession with geopolitical analysis, for example), but they are worth reading.

I subscribed during the middle of the Second Congo War. Stratfor was a much better source of info on what was happening then anything else. They weren't giving me rocket science -- it probably wasn't hard for them to figure out that a) the official Congolese Army was worthless, and b) the Rwandans were kicking their asses mostly by coordinating flanking attacks with satellite phones. CNN, the Atlantic, etc. all probably had guys who knew way more then that; but none of them would consistently be posted on their websites because thousands of black people getting shot in a major battle is not very "newsworthy."

The BBC was a little better, because they have a whole section of their website dedicated to Africa, which mans that even if theirs a news-orgy because the President had a blow-job thousands of people getting killed will be posted somewhere. But they don't focus on the nuts and bolts of military operations the way Stratfor does, so the Congo war wasn't always the number one story on their site either.

Uh huh. So Stratfor is such a bunch of ignorant unworthy losers that "Fortune 500 companies and international government agencies" (wikipedia) have funnelled millions of dollars to these people because they are so useless.

TFA is classic right wing spin. And not even very good at it. Like Stratfor.

The group's reputation among foreign policy writers, analysts, and practitioners is poor

In an intelligence community that swore, on the record, that Saddam Hussein was pursuing nuclear weapons to add to his already formidable stockpile of conventional WMD's? That Hussein had operational ties to Bin Laddin?

That's abiout what we have here. One guy, Fisher, has picked up the fact that another guy Drezner, doesn't have a high opinion of Stratfor,, though he has a high opinion of himself and constantly quotes himself in his own articles in <i>Foreign Policy</i>. Based on this one guy's opinion, Drezner, Fisher concludes that EVERYONE thinks Stratfor is "a joke," which is complete hyperbole. And now 100 slashdot posters, the majority of whom have no idea what Stratfor really does and have never been on their web site, get in line to repeat the same thing.

Certainly Stratfor is not as smart as Stratfor thinks Stratfor is. Their analyses are somewhat uneven. Their "Above the Tearline" segments, for example, are a poster child for simplistic thinking. On the other hand, their analysis of the US Navy and its deployments is as close to perfect as you can realistically get--FAR better than something like Debkafile, for example, that routinley invents destroyer fleets plying the waters of the Indian Ocean. They have a lot of short "quickie" articles you could probably get for yourself on the Web, but their in-depth articles are well written, comprehensive, and insightful.

They do have people on the ground all over the world. You can call them journalists instead of analysts if you want, but their coverage is far more insightful than a pool reporter for Fox or CNN. At least these guys have studied their subjects rather than spent their time blow drying their hair.

If you quote Stratfor there is always someone to jump up and down and proclaim them and you worthless, but if you neglect to mention Stratfor is your source, suddenly what you say is considered pure genius.

And they are hardly ruined. Yeah, the script kiddies walked all over them this time. They may have gotten 5 million emails (Really?) but this is no Climategate or Private Manning. And Stratfor will emerge stronger for it.

Really? They'd be spread pretty thin since their total headcount is well under a hundred of which most would be in the office.To show how unimportant they are, when the hacking of Stratfor was reported a major bank near me with a couple of hundred thousand employees reported that they had a total of four logins to Stratfor so were not worried about compromised details.

First of all, "Max Fisher" who writes for The Atlantic's international website, is more of a gossip blogger than a serious journalist. If you look at the list of his stories, you will find that they are either completely trivial, or re-tweets of other peoples' work. Some of his stories look suspiciously like press releases. The European edition of the Atlantic's website has nowhere near the reputation for integrity that the US edition enjoys.

Want to hear a joke? It's called "The New York Times".Media these days is so slanted that every news piece has an agenda. If you were to rely on the popular media for your news and information, well, you can forget about being well informed. They excel at filtering out information that disagrees with their world view.

At its essence, Stratfor is a news company. They gather 'Intelligence' from the 'field' and put it out there. They tell you what is going on, in a boots-on-the-groud point of view. They provide enough background to give context, the news, and what this could mean to the future of the region - and that's it. They don't do human interest stories. It is not your typical news. That is what Open Source Intelligence is.

So you read through the 'intel' they gather, and unless you have a particular interest in the region, or a business need for the information, it is boring stuff... So?

I know a company that imports guar gum, an ingredient that is used primarily in food products. The primary manufacturers of the product are in Pakistan. They are continually researching what is going on at the local level in Pakistan, not just the stuff that makes the headlines. Stratfor provides that info, as boring as that is. They also monitor situations in the regions their product is transported through, lest there be any supply disruptions. They want to be able to have contingency plans, such as leaning more on a supplier from India, even though the price may be higher, there is less chance of supply disruption, etc.

You would have a point if not for the fact that he has stories about them saying the same thing that predate the existence of Wikileaks. The only people sniffling are the nerds who are butthurt that Assange and Anonymous were wrong.